


A Treatise on the Blood of the Nightjar

by pauraque



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-01
Updated: 2003-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco liked the garden at night.  It was the bedrooms that put him on edge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Treatise on the Blood of the Nightjar

**Author's Note:**

> For the HP Improv #5. The prompt was "defile, pause, phantom, heat".

The summer after second year, Draco's parents held a dinner party. It was not extravagant like some of the others had been, but very well-attended. Extra chairs had to be brought in from the study. Draco expected his mother to be angry that they didn't match the set, but she didn't say a word about it; she just looked tired and grim.

Draco knew some of the guests. Vincent's and Gregory's parents. Pansy's grandfather. Professor Snape. Others were strangers to him. Once all the guests had arrived, and Draco had been seen (not heard, of course), he had been sent to eat in the kitchen, and then to play outside.

He was too old to occupy himself that way, but he hadn't protested. He wanted to see how long it would take them to notice he hadn't come back. He brought a book.

When it grew too dark to read, he sat by the creek and tossed pebbles at the fish. He could just barely hear the front door closing as each guest left. After a while, the lights began to go out in the windows.

Draco got up. His knees were stiff from sitting on the ground so long. He walked round the corner of the house to the garden. He liked the garden at night.

They kept it faintly lit, for the benefit of the night-blooming cherry vines that formed tangled canopies between the trees. He paused under the heat of one of the lamps, where translucent green Phantom moths fluttered, hitting their heads against the glass. Tink. Tink. The  
light bulb was already marked with the black spots of lesser, mortal insects that had not survived this daredevil pastime.

As Draco watched, something dark swooped down among the moths and caught one; at first he thought it was a bat, but then he remembered: only the nightjar can catch the Phantom moth. He watched the bird until it alighted on the ground by the pond, tilting its head back and choking down the pale green light. When it was finished, it settled there as if to sleep. They were funny little birds, fat and low, like they'd been squished. Whiskers and a short brown face set with glittering black eyes. A beak that seemed tiny, barely protruding from the feathers, but those feathers hid a mouth that opened wide enough to catch a ghost. This one had a long tail — a male, then. The blood of the male nightjar can be useful in potions to ward off  
unfriendly spirits. Draco remembered that because he'd got it wrong on his final exams.

He wandered further along the side of the house to the front patio, which earlier had been crowded with broomsticks and tied-up pegasi. The wards against Apparition extended to the far edges of the grounds; it was such a long walk that the guests had all arrived in other ways. One broomstick still remained: a sleek but utilitarian model from the 1980s. One guest was still here.

Draco went inside and checked the downstairs bedroom. His mother was asleep. Halfway sitting up with her cheek resting on her shoulder, a paperback book fallen from her fingertips. The side of her neck was pale and exposed.

He went to check upstairs, and he could hear the low grunts and the rustle of shifting bedclothes from far down the hall. The door was wide open; he paused on the threshold. The room was dark, but the lights from the garden glowed through the window, turning everything pale blue. The broken highlights on the silk sheets. The white expanse of his father's back. Draco had taken off his shoes; he made no sound on the wooden floor. But glittering black eyes picked him out of the darkness.

Professor Snape's skinny white fingers tightened around a fistful of the sheet. "The boy," he breathed.

Draco's father stopped what he was doing and slowly twisted round to look. Not startled. Not even concerned. His lips were wet and coloured, recently defiled.

"Draco. Would you go and fetch me the glass of wine on the dining room table?"

Draco nodded, and as he turned, he heard Snape's hissing whisper, and his father's muted, derisive chuckle in response.

He came down the stairs, and the dining room opened up like a pit beneath him in the half-dark. It smelled of cedar and recently extinguished candles. The long table had not yet been cleared; the elves knew not to touch it until after four. A thin white tablecloth with lacy edges, waving slightly — there was a window open somewhere in the house. The air was dry and tasted faintly cold. Moonlight came through a window near the ceiling and picked out silvery highlights all around the room: The metal seams of the grand piano. The still, towering chandelier that Draco had always thought resembled an upside-down wedding cake. The white edges of crumb-scattered china plates, and the knives that lay across them. At one end of the table was a half-empty bottle of white wine and two stemmed glasses, two pulled-out chairs. One glass was empty, the other nearly full.

He brought the full glass back upstairs. As he approached, he heard them whispering. His father's low purr:

"As you yourself said earlier, something must be done..."

And Snape's harsher hiss:

"I never said that. You're twisting my words."

Draco came to the doorway. They were still in bed. His father had his head propped up on his hand. Snape was sitting up now, a sheet over his lap. He was tense, and without his clothes he was unbearably gaunt, like his bones were about to push through his skin. Draco didn't know how his father could ever want someone like that. He looked away and quickly crossed the room. The bottoms of his feet stuck to the floor a little bit. He handed his father the wine.

"Took your time, didn't you," his father said, casually disdainful.

Draco backed up a step. He wondered faintly if the wine contained a slow poison.

His father drank most of what was left in the glass. Then offered it to Snape. Snape took a careful sip, watching Draco all the while — perhaps wondering the same thing Draco had. His father took the glass and handed it back, clearly expecting Draco to take it away for him. There was about an inch of pale yellow left in the bottom.

Draco looked at the glass for a moment, and then, on a whim, drained it. It burned his mouth and made him want to sneeze, but he managed  
to swallow it all. He looked to his father. Approval?

Boredom. "Are you quite finished? Leave us."

Draco looked at Snape. His chin had dropped, and that nasty, tangled, sweaty hair was falling in his face. The blue-grey light from the window outlined his arm and made dark shadows under each of his ribs. He looked like all his nerves were standing on end, and he was clearly holding down embarrassment at being seen this way. A man who bled nightjars. Draco didn't know how Snape could ever want someone like his father.

"Goodnight, Professor," he said.

Snape cleared his throat and averted his eyes, but didn't answer.

Draco left, and closed the door behind him. His bedroom was only two doors down, and whatever they were going to get up to, he didn't want to hear it. Once he'd changed into his pyjamas, he decided to move to the downstairs bedroom, just for good measure.

His mother was still there; he'd forgotten about her. She had awakened and was sitting up in bed in the little brown room, her paperback lying open, face-down in her lap. She had clearly heard him coming, and was looking at him sharply, questioningly, as soon as he appeared at the door.

"Professor Snape is staying over," he said simply.

His mother smoothed her features into a mask of oceanic calm. She reached up and deftly pulled a silver pin from her hair. "That's none of your concern," she said. She tried to pull another pin, and it caught. She winced and turned her head. Used both hands to try to work it free. "If only indiscretion were the worst of their crimes," she said in a muffled voice that didn't seem to be addressed to him. "It worries me more when they stay up half the night talking and planning, drinking their wine. I'm almost glad—" And she broke off with a little cry as a strand of her hair pulled out with the bobby pin.

Draco stood there watching for a minute as she smoothed her hair, covering over the wound. It didn't seem that she was going to say more, so he shrugged and got into bed. She moved over to give him room, then turned on the lamp and went back to her reading. The light attracted the glass-green Phantom moths, which presently began pecking at the window, hitting their heads. Tink. Tink.

Soon, Draco fell asleep.


End file.
